Game design director Stephen “Mortdog” Mortimer for Teamfight Tactics addressed fans’ questions on June 14 in a Twitch stream, dropping teasers of a permanent item mover mechanic, much like Golden Remover.
Moving items around isn’t a new concept within TFT. The team has been experimenting with the idea for some time, from benching a champion to remove an item (Shimmerscale trait) to Augments offering a Golden Remover. A permanent Golden Remover is even available through the game mode Pengu’s Party, featuring two traits from every past set in TFT in conjunction with gameplay from Set 11 Inkborn Fables. During Mortdog’s Q&A stream on June 14, the dev addressed questions about moving items around freely, saying the TFT team was “looking into this pretty heavily.”
Moving items and components at will has its pros and cons, according to Mortdog. The biggest con, per the game dev, is that “when optimized, it gets pretty out of control.” Benefits to a permanent mechanic like Golden Remover include helping alleviate bad RNG while increasing the skill gap for competitive players.
Having played Pengu’s Party, I can understand both the pros and cons of having a permanent Golden Remover as a mechanic. The ability to move items at will can get wild. But I also feel it would help new and casual players, allowing them to experiment with flexible gameplay and comp transitions without having to worry about whether a specific item will work on a different board.
A permanent Golden Remover isn’t likely to show up in Set 12, but with the TFT team working on projects over a year out, it’s plausible we will see an iteration of an item remover mechanic soon. Test out what a Golden Remover feels like every game through Pengu’s Party as the game mode leaves TFT Set 11 Inkborn Fables on July 15.
